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Interceptor immortality, what a great idea!


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Interceptor immortality, what a great idea!

Here is another; that the Xenonauts don't die, but go to sleep. Then, after a nappy change and some hot coco, their momma can give them a kiss and they can go outside to play with the aliens again.

Here is another; why don't you drop Goldhawk, and change your name to 3K games?

This is the first speed bump for me, and its a large one, a deal breaker in fact.

I though this was going to be a hard game with hard decisions. Interceptor immortality, not only makes it way too easy, but is an direct insult. Seems like the developers are starting to cater to the people who prefer a "streamlined" game.

And no, I don't want to manually decommission a downed plane in order so simulate how the game should work.

If this is an option or not implemented for "insane" then fine. If recovery happens a few times on "insane" fine.

If not, It's GAME OVER for me. How's that for a rant/terrifying ultimatum? :P

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well, they did say...

"we know this one is a bit of a controversial change, but please give it time. If you want to discuss it in any great depth please do so in the Geoscape balance thread in the Beta forum."

[smug] I've not lost any interceptors [/smug] although [anti-smug]it's only towards the end of November [/anti-smug] and the larger stuff is just starting to appear. The point being, I've not had to use the new feature in anger yet, so it's had no impact early game for me.

I would have definitely preferred to see the game balance/economy support the loss of aircraft. Presumably they are recovered even out in the middle of the ocean or in Antarctica. I'll pop it up on the game balance thread. Hopefully, you'll do the same as that would seem to be the one the devs will look at first.

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Hmmm...I got a couple of thing for you.

1.Stop raging.

2.Try to understand the situation.

The devs made the planes this way so that when a plane was crashed...a player wouldn't have to put all they're funds into a new one.Because as it was in build 18, 19.1, 19.2...Losing a plane would of been a game breaker.Especially a advanced plane like a corsair...

Now on the realistic part...Would you imagine that when a human pilot is shot down he just gets simply destroyed?i don't think so...I mean there is always that emergency landing when the plane is smoking for the pilot to know when to disengage.It's not that hard to belive(especially since Xenonauts have pilots with experience over 20 years...The Iceland Incident)that they could do a emergency landing to save they're asses when thing are about to bite the dust...

O yeah and 3...

3.Stop raging...

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You make it sound as though there's no way to lose by doing badly at air combat. If a player loses every single dogfight, they're going to run out of funds and hit the game over screen whether they have to shell out for a new plane or not. 72 hours of downtime means that you're not going to have the aircraft back online until the UFOs have finished probing every cow in a hundred mile radius.

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But it's our turn to probe every cow in a hundred mile radius! Darn Ayluhns!

When this has come up before, I'm sure I mentioned that when there are waves of UFOs and limited hanger space, that repair process really does impact you. But I would much rather the 72 hours delay minimum was dies to you having to buy one and convert it.

- recovery from middle of oceans.

- recovery from nations lost to the aliens (every pilot meets up with the resistance. The resistance with a large pick up truck to get the plane out too)

- recovery from jungles, tundras, deserts and polar regions.

and this is every time? I get a "disconnect" message just thinking about it :)

form a previous post of mine

I was thinking along the lines of Stinkspray. They'll have invulnerable soldiers next, I thought to myself. Look where that got UFO:ET.

I much prefer that your organisation can actually suffer some sort of loss, in all areas of the game. Whether it's ground combat, interceptions or building 12 radars in your base and throwing away all your money.

As noted, the issue seems to be in the costs of aircraft and balancing of same.

Take another extreme. All aircraft are free. There may be a delay in getting them to you, plus some extra time for modifications perhaps, but essentially free. This represents the research of Xenonauts going out into the wider world and the engineers out there, picking up the methods used by your organisation.

This can be modified if people feel the need to have all those alien alloys etc contribute more or less. But with a stunted game economy and so many other areas either free or auto-upgraded, I see it as a better option than never losing anything.

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I think it's a tricky situation. If aircraft are free full stop, then you lower the impact of money as there's now not a whole lot to spend it on in the geoscape other than bases. If we go back to the older system, air battles are too important - I can't be the only one who was using outdated equipment in ground battles so I could afford planes.

The problem is that you need aircraft to get money, and you need money to get aircraft. So when a new player is a bit reckless and sends a squadron to take out his first corvette and fails, he's screwed when his aircraft are blasted out of the sky. Maybe you could request a nation to send an airsquad instead, but they'd only have a x% chance to shoot down a craft? That way you can make a comeback after a defeat in the air while still making aircraft cost money to replace.

Maybe even have a branch of the tech tree that improves local forces' ability to intercept, but not necessarily your own.

Edited by Ol' Stinky
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Making them cheaper and quicker to build would be a hell of a lot of a better idea. There is no way in hell a crashed and blown up aircraft is ever going to see service again in the real world. It's gamey as anything and a huge step away from the permanent consequences seriousness of the OG. I can understand salvaging it for alenium/alloys (if it's on land in friendly territory), but getting a brand new replacement (basically) is ridiculous.

I understand the issue, though: in this game the air war is actually challenging both in terms of skill, alien tactics, and money/resource management, and it necessarily needs to be more challenging than the ground war in terms of the latter issue. I have no simple solutions, but fine-tuning what's already there for costs/buildtimes is better than this, that's for sure imo.

Would you imagine that when a human pilot is shot down he just gets simply destroyed?i don't think so...I mean there is always that emergency landing when the plane is smoking for the pilot to know when to disengage.
Yeah, that's when it gets damaged on the screen. When it gets destroyed on the screen, that's because he didn't (or wasn't able to) disengage soon enough. Ever see one of those videos of a plane being hit by a missile (usually, that's all it takes)? They explode, any pilot would likely die if he didn't eject within 1-2 seconds, and the airframe is irreparably damaged at the very least. And those are human missiles, not "alenium torpedoes", which would probably have an explosion that looked like a 2,000-lb bomb going off.

[video=youtube_share;0VBiqsQ2CjY]

And, yeah, when real world pilots get shot down they literally get shot down, into the ground, in a ball of fire. That's where the expression comes from: getting shot, and then going down, into the ground...

Yeah, sometimes there are successful emergency landings with heavy damage. And in the game, sometimes "very red" planes make it out of combat alive. That's the simulation version of a successful emergency landing (and really, there should still be airframe post-combat loss for heavily damaged planes that can't be fully repaired, as well as crash landings a certain % of the time for different levels of damage, but no the air war doesn't need to be more difficult).

Edited by DNK
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The costs of ACs were adjusted in 19.2, the Condor adjusted up to 100K, the mig down to 150k, corsair down also, and all build times considerately lowered. How did it fair with people, did not see any feedback from folks. Would much rather see a balance around that then recovered and repaired airplanes fixed up as good as new.

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ThothKins: "Geoscape balance thread in the Beta forum" I'm starting a revolution! At the time and place of my choosing!

Mr. Lock:

1)This is not a rage, it's a whine.

2)I understand the situation perfectly. Realism? I never said anything about that. "Now on the realistic part...Would you imagine that when a human pilot is shot down he just gets simply destroyed? I don't think so...I mean there is always that emergency landing when the plane is smoking for the pilot to know when to disengage." Err why don't you put down your tube of glue, please.

3)As earlier stated, this is a whine :P

O'l Stinky: Well, you still have the alien base/terror missions. And you can sell equipment. Sure things get serious, but that's the fun part. As to Cow probing? Well, they had it coming, dressing like that :P

DNK: You are a scholar and a gentleman. I agree wholeheartedly. You should run for president(of the company).

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O'l Stinky: Well, you still have the alien base/terror missions. And you can sell equipment. Sure things get serious, but that's the fun part. As to Cow probing? Well, they had it coming, dressing like that :P

I guess. Those are reactive, though, we need an active way of scraping enough cash to make a comeback.

Maybe what we need is the Cult of Sirius. I always loved raiding those guys for spare cash in Apoc, the balancing factor being that you'd get soldiers injured (or maybe even killed!) and not be ready for when the next wave of aliens arrived.

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This could be the beginning of the end. Why change the gameplay like this to cater for an easier more streamlined experience?

If it is such an issue, then let us get insurance for our jets or rent them at reduced rates or balance the cost of them. Or have an event where a country sponsors your loss. Or have jets from sponsored countries assist you.

No. That would make sense. Instead, lets change reality to such a degree that a downed jet magically crash lands saving itself. The aliens should just give up because they can never destroy your aircraft. The magical jets also compliment the new magical country of Greece, which is now part of the middle east.

These kinds of major changes to game play are only going to throw balance out even more in the long term. This should be a user mod or at most a tickable option.

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Ol'Stinky:

If aircraft are free full stop, then you lower the impact of money as there's now not a whole lot to spend it on in the geoscape other than bases.

I don't think it's a coincidence that following that post, I trotted off to look at alternative funding systems. Beyond the scope of this game, but I may post it up somewhere.

Currently Free: Ballistic Weapons and ammo, Grenade updates, Stun weapons, missile updates, facility updates, weapon tier ammunition. More importantly here, aircraft ammunition and missiles.

Disconnect: this stuff appears by magic with no lead times. A large amount of it contains very rare alien technology. So we have a situation where Alenium torpedoes are endless, but the basic aircraft available to all major armed forces already in 1979, can't be supplied at the start of the game (for slight modification) to become Xeno-planes.

>Clunk<

If we go back to the older system, air battles are too important - I can't be the only one who was using outdated equipment in ground battles so I could afford planes.

I think that under the old system rules there should be funding/ research tension between the ground and air combat advancements. It's good decision making for X-Com games.

So when a new player is a bit reckless and sends a squadron to take out his first corvette and fails, he's screwed when his aircraft are blasted out of the sky.

Indeed. Even if you get past one loss, larger UFOs are going to kick the butt of anything else you could put up, so it is too difficult at normal level in air combat.

Solution 1: All aircraft are recoverable and then possibly take time to repair.

Solution 2: All condors are free.

In both solutions, you are getting the planes. There are no pilot skills.

Controls: Both are controlled by hanger space. Both take 72 hours to get to base. In the first solution it's because everyone is in an A-Team series. In the second it's delivery from the funding nation and tweaking to Xeno-Standards.

I don't get the disconnect at all with the second option that I do with the first.

The second doesn't require anything additional in the game. No new mechanics, no new handwavium, and creates a sense of loss. The first doesn't make sense (see recovery location issues above) and creates a game of perceived hand holding. As mentioned UFO: ET got slated for this sort of thing. I was on those forums and people just couldn't get past immortal soldiers. Immortal pilots is less obvious, but will still get banged on about.

A smallish elephant regards the Condor's weapons. If you have Gatling lasers on it, you'll need to pay for those.

Now, this may provide enough balance left alone. That's your penalty for losing Condors. But what if even that is too much of a burden (frankly the whole game economy may be broken if it is)?

Well, if all of the alenium torpedoes and missiles are free, what on earth is the major hold up with these things. The base defence equivalent gets built in a heartbeat. Make these free too.

Now the above talks about Condors. What about all of the others? They all cost much more, take ages to build. What if we lose those?

Why not just an expansion of the above? If you lose a Corsair, then you can order another one. The delay in getting this piece of kit to your base will be longer, but it won't cost you anything. So, you get the sense of loss, you get the hassle of waiting for a new one, but you don;t lose the game because of it.

Where is all this lovely technology coming from? Well, against my cynical nature, Xenonauts does indeed share it's research findings with all of it''s funding partners. They race off to retool their aerospace industry on a war footing. All of those fighter crashes go straight into their resources, so they have enough alloys and Alenium to supply you with the odd aircraft.

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I think that under the old system rules there should be funding/ research tension between the ground and air combat advancements. It's good decision making for X-Com games.

For sure! The problem is that it was too extreme, as in I only spent anything on ground combat if I absolutely had to. I put all my funding and research towards dogfghting first and foremost.

Is your suggestion to remove the costs from airplanes altogether/make them dirt cheap but have the aircraft weapon upgrades cost money? In all honesty, I think that could work. It's not that different from losing a solider and buying a rookie: yes, it's only $10k to get some fresh meat, but he comes wielding a water pistol and wearing nothing but a cardboard box. If you can't afford to upgrade him you can send them out to fight andron elites, but the odds are against you.

Or is it along the lines of the founding countries having planes "in stock" and you're allowed to lose a set number per month (or whenever) before you have to pay full price for lost aircraft?

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thanks for reading my Wall of Text Ol' Stinky :)

yeah, it's getting that tension right that's the key (and hey, this is beta balancing after all).

I'd go with removing the cost of Aircraft completely at first, and see where it goes. Practically everything else is free, so holding onto things that are actively killing the balance seems like a decent starting point.

Choices for aircraft weapons:-

1) Gatling lasers et al, also become free as per alenium torpedoes following their research.- adds consistency.

2) All weapon systems must be rebuilt. The cost of air combat failure. This includes an alenium torpedo/ missile launcher for each craft. - again, consistent form a different approach.

3) keep as is with Gatling lasers costing and other ones for free, but at least some cost onto losing the craft.

1 or 2 for me as the current one is >clunky<

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A pilot could survive...a plane? Not really.

An emergency landing when damanged is different then escaping an enemy chasing you with your airplane falling apart around you.

The alien WON'T let you aescape.

The escape mechanic is already there BTW - afterburn and evade going away from the enemy. The trick is to avoid getting hit with you're already heavily damaged plane untill you exit the enemies weapons range. Good luck with that.

If you ever saw the result of a plane crash, you'd know that recovering a plane to repair it makes NO DAMN SENSE. It easier to build a new one.

On the other hand, if the airplane did use advanced amterials - like Alenium - it does make sense to recover THOSE.

Edited by TrashMan
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A pilot could survive...a plane? Not really.

Sure he can, he just activates the Giant Pause Button, like we do., and makes his escape slowly and safely. What do you mean that's only in the game?

The alien WON'T let you aescape.

I'd like to suggest little pincer graphics for the air interception screen, as the aliens come to catch the parachutes.

The trick is to avoid getting hit with you're already heavily damaged plane untill you exit the enemies weapons range. Good luck with that.

Anytime I want to do that, it's always with the Foxtrot.. So, that always ends well :)

If you ever saw the result of a plane crash, you'd know that recovering a plane to repair it makes NO DAMN SENSE. It easier to build a new one.

Doing research on the 1970s for the Geopolitical thread, I came across information that the there was a giant cellotape stockpile in 1979. Apparently stationary companies hadn't foreseen the rise of computing. Also bear in mind that jigsaws were all the rage back then. Combine the two, give it some Xeno-funding...

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The costs of ACs were adjusted in 19.2, the Condor adjusted up to 100K, the mig down to 150k, corsair down also, and all build times considerately lowered. How did it fair with people, did not see any feedback from folks. Would much rather see a balance around that then recovered and repaired airplanes fixed up as good as new.

The feedback was that doing anything other than all Migs until you build Marauders is a waste, and it still is. I'd rather see AC trivially cheap and destroyable than immortal, it just feels like such a huge disconnect from the rest of the game (although admittedly it is hard to lose planes period once you figure out the basics of air combat.)

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Just pointing out that this does make the game harder. After an interceptor is destroyed normally it only takes 3 days to get a new one.

With the immortality bit put in it take 3 days and however long to repair. Given its not a financial strain but was 75000 ever really a strain.

EDIT: Wait I was only thinking about the condors. I now see how this makes the game much easier for later tier aircraft :/ But I will play the game before I make decisions.

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(although admittedly it is hard to lose planes period once you figure out the basics of air combat.)

What is the big deal about immortal aircraft, then? Once we figure out how air combat works, what to do and how to do it, it's like the feature isn't even there.

No one seems to have noticed yet that this is more beneficial towards Iron Man mode, where you can be playing for 10, 20, 30 hours, and losing a lousy plane can be game over, and then a comment like "man this is way too hard, i'ma go back playing solitaire".

On regular, we lose a plane, reload save, or we might be screwed. So, does it REALLY make a difference? Is it really fair to pounce on the devs because of a potentially awesome feature that is not even relevant when the save/load feature is a couple clicks away?

And if you're playing Iron Man in an unstable Beta, well, good luck getting yourself burned.

EDIT: oh, and something else, i doubt most of these posts are coming from someone that has actually finished the game at least once, only way to get the WHOLE picture.

Edited by Xenomorph
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To quote the last Deus Ex game: "I didn't ask for this".

I'm still in favour, like I said in the thread about it, of aircraft being destroyed. However, it's Chris's game, and although I really think having a recoverable aircraft should be varying % chance based on difficulty (75% chance on easy for an example), it's up to him if he wants to implement it that way.

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REPOSTED from the Beta 19-3 Thread

What do you think about this? (since a separate, specific thread seems to be started lol)

-----------------

Hmm...

Hey hardcores give me some feedback on this idea.

A possible solution to the immortal plane problem...

Essentially its a 72 hour penalty for loosing a plane vs a $$$ penalty right?

What if we adjusted the penalty slightly? Imagine this if you would...

Players are now given the ability to request $$$/Planes from the Funding Nations.

The requests take X hours/days to process and will be based on how well the Funding Nation receiving the request like you.

Denied requests will result in a small reduction in points with the Funding Nation as they loose faith in your ability as a Commander.

Granted requests will result in a greater reduction of points with the Funding Nation.

The player must now balance the time it takes to process, along with the number of requests they send, as well as who they send them to...

This would result in requests successful or not costing you time and money as well as an increased risk of loosing a Funding Nation...

It spreads the money part out over time more, (You loose monthly funding) and you may loose more money overall, but at least it might keep you in the fight.

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@Mytheos

Sounds pretty close to the request system UFO: Aftershock had. I like it but, since it increases complexity(and thus enhances gameplay) I doubt it would be adopted...Still, it is a fairly realistic system that I would be happy to see implemented.

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@Mytheos

Sounds pretty close to the request system UFO: Aftershock had. I like it but, since it increases complexity(and thus enhances gameplay) I doubt it would be adopted...Still, it is a fairly realistic system that I would be happy to see implemented.

Interesting.

I havent played anything but XCOM94, and 2012 but I might look that up to see exactly how they implemented it.

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